How large corporates integrate children’s rights

Within the business and human rights sphere, it is often argued that respecting human rights is also good for business as it decreases risk to the company and strengthens its license to operate. A company that harms its surroundings is not sustainable long-term. But while we frame these arguments in terms of human rights, what about children’s rights as they go beyond the rights of adults?[1] Does the same hold true for one of the, at least by the corporate sector, often forgotten groups? Children are uniquely impacted by company supply chains, operations, products and services, and in turn impact companies as family members of workers, a future workforce, consumers and, as a generation which are advocating for their future.

Since 2014, Global Child Forum, in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, have been benchmarking corporates around the globe on how they report on their children’s rights impact. The aim of the benchmark series has been to track what companies are actually doing in relation to children and go beyond the issues of child labour and charity, to also highlight the need to look at product responsibility and marketing, environmental and societal impact and even employer practices in relation to parents. This endeavour has resulted in a rich database on corporate practice. But data, without understanding, rarely drives change. So, we wondered, is there a relationship between how companies are scoring on children’s rights and how they are performing in other areas?

We ran a correlation analysis between the results of the two latest benchmark studies: the Global State of Children’s Rights and Business 2019 and the State of Children’s Rights and Business in Southeast Asia 2020 against other parameters such as profitability, size/revenue and registered controversies around human rights^[2]. It is our expectation that the results from the analysis can help bring clarity to how respecting children’s rights relates to other areas of business activity. It will also serve as a starting point for exploring how synergies and positive effects can be harnessed by integrating a children’s rights perspective in a wider human rights and sustainability approach.

This paper focuses on two of the most interesting findings from this exercise:

1) the correlation between how companies score in our benchmark study and third-party reporting on human rights violations;

2) the correlation between how companies score in our benchmark study with revenue and profit-margins (EBITDA-margin).

This report is published by Global Child Forum, using data from the State of Children’s Rights Benchmark Reports from 2019 and 2020. Boston Consulting Group has assisted in performing the data analysis using additional data provided by Sustainalytics and Bureau van Dijk. For more information see the Methodological note.

[1] Children are in this paper referred to according to the definition in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as a person under 18 years old.

[2] Source for ESG-risk ratings and controversies data: Sustainalytics Global Access.

Source for financial data Bureau van Dijk